Sierra Trip Reports

Skiers: Alex, Andrew & Nick

Date: Sunday, March 21st

Photos: Andrew (edited by Nick in Lightroom)

Synopsis: Alex, Andrew and I headed out Sunday to a higher elevation zone around Tahoe to try and take advantage of a couple of inches of fresh snow that fell over the weekend. Below 8,500 ft, the approach conditions are getting rough and involve quite a lot of patch to patch skinning and indirect routes. Up above 8,500 ft however, there is still good enough coverage for some good turns.

Alex and Nick skinning up to our destination zone. Neither Alex nor I brought our cameras and fortunately found out Andrew had another buddies old point and shoot in his pack from a past trip. Andrew was nice enough to snap pics all day and we never even got any of him! Bad form on us!

Sunday ended up being great to be honest. After skiing at the resort on Saturday with very high temps and mush everywhere, I didn’t have really any expectations for Sunday other than getting in a workout with some buddies. When I woke up at 6 AM it was pouring rain at my house at 6,200 ft. During the day the weather was shifting pretty dramatically with periods of light snow, blowing crazy winds, calm winds, sucker holes of blue sky, etc..

A nice moment of good weather.

Alex punching it up through the trees. It was pretty warm during the first lap, but the winds picked up and later in the day.

Working our way up.

We encountered several inches of untracked snow on a nice supportable base in the zones we skied. We stuck to lower angle stuff mostly as when we got up to a bench the winds started hammering and neither Andrew nor I wanted to deal with the winds up top (or the couple of inches just sliding off the smooth crust underneath).

Alex is killing it given he is only starting to transition from split boarding to skiing – fortunately his transitions are much faster these days…. 🙂

Honestly I have a great time meadow-skipping – untracked fast snow with a good base is super fun for skiing like this. Alex checking out one set of turns, and proceeding further down.

There are a couple of gullies in the area that we ducked into given the stability we encountered. Nick throwing a turn up on a wall.

As we worked down, no doubt about it, the snow was getting heavier. Fortunately the base was still supportable under the skis (boot pen was another issue, though). Alex working through the heavier stuff.

There are definitely steeper lines around the area. By that time the winds were kicking pretty hard up there and neither Andrew nor I wanted to go and deal with it. I was also concerned the little amount of snow would just sluff off the crust base really easily. I think some other guys skied some of the zones higher and found really good conditions, though. Regardless, I had a great time just sticking to the lower angle stuff.

During a transition on another lap, messing around with some Mercury bouldering….

Good turns along the rock walls in the wind drifts.

We had moved over to a slightly different aspect and found some colder snow (although it did get heavier as we lost elevation). We were all having a great time, though.

Alex:

Nick:

Alex showing there is still snow good to be had in Tahoe:

Later in the day through the Central Valley, Andrew got this great shot of pretty massive Thunderheads heading towards the Western Slope of the Sierra.

A great day out!